Lucey chooses Nantucket over six more years in the Coast Guard
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
It is the case that she and her crew worked on the night of Jan. 26, in the Creeks of all places, that reminds Senior Chief Sheila Lucey why her Nantucket experience in the Coast Guard is so unique. That night, the coldest of the winter, two men rowed out in a dinghy to check a boat on its mooring in Nantucket Harbor.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Outgoing Station Brant Point Senior Chief Lucey is likely to be standing in the same spot she is above in about a month. Not leaving Nantucket when she officially retires from the Coast Guard at a ceremony on Friday afternoon at the station, Lucey will be the town's deputy harbormaster. She starts her new job working for Marine Superintendent and Harbormaster Dave Fronzuto on June 4.

With the harbor iced in, the men became disoriented, ultimately getting out of their dinghy onto a shoal and getting trapped in the Creeks. Lucey said reaching the men, who by that time had hypothermia, proved to be a challenge for her new crew, most of whom had only been with her for about six months. Donning drysuits, the Coasties eventually found their way over to the trapped men in the Creeks and got them to the hospital.

"That was a really difficult case," said Lucey. "Definitely an eye-opener to the new crew to what can happen here in the winter."

It's times like these that will be recalled when Lucey steps down as Senior Chief of Coast Guard Station Brant Point, a post she has held since May, 2002, at a change of command and retirement ceremony on Friday. She will be saying goodbye to not only her faithful crew, but to a way of life she has embraced for over two decades.

Although Chief Lucey had six years remaining to reach full retirement age with the U. S. Coast Guard, she opted for early retirement in order to stay on Nantucket.

Still, her decision was bittersweet.

"It's the only thing I know; it's been my whole life for 24 years," said Lucey. "It's why I do whatever I do every day; it's why I think. It's your life - it's not just the job - it's your whole life."

In August 2006, Lucey asked for a second one-year extension to remain on Nantucket, but did not get the answer she hoped for.

Although she cannot say for certain what her next assignment would have been, two available posts included heading up an aidsto navigation crew out of Portland Harbor in Maine and taking charge of an 87-foot Coast Guard cutter out of Montauk, N.Y. that would spend most of its time patrolling for terrorist activities in New York City Harbor.

"I don't know if I would have been able to, or if I would have the desire to give the next job as much energy as I gave this one," said Lucey. "I just couldn't picture anything being this good and me liking it; I just felt like anything else would have been a letdown.

"The Montauk, N.Y. job would have been a lot of going to New York City and doing security, which would have been cool maybe for a couple weeks, but then I think I would have gotten bored with it."

EARLY RETIREMENT, SORT OF

Turning 42 this year, Lucey decided that no job the Coast Guard had to offer could scratch the surface of her time on Nantucket, so she is choosing early retirement, and will be exchanging her Semper Paratus patch for the town's sperm whale emblem when she starts her new job with the Marine Department.

Two weeks ago, she accepted the town's offer of the deputy harbormaster position, allowing her to stay on Nantucket in the community she found to be like no other since joining the Coast Guard in July 1983.

"I've got my friends here; I've got what I like to do here; I'm just really, really comfortable here. I like the people, I like the community and I think it's beautiful to look at," she said. "I just don't think any other place would have ever measured up for me, and then that wouldn't have been fair to the Coast Guard either because I wouldn't have been giving them 100 percent. I would have just been bumming out."

ON-THE-JOB TRAINING

Leading up to Friday's festivities was a winter of cases - Coast Guard parlance for rescues - that one would expect from an island outpost, including responding to the sinking of the F/V Lady of Grace on Jan. 27 in Nantucket Sound, the 74-foot F/V Creole Belle 35 miles southeast of Nantucket on

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Feb. 7 and the scalloper Rainmaker taking on water 19 miles east of Nantucket on Feb. 19.

The Creeks case, although not a daring, highseas rescue, embodied the level of readiness the crew of Station Brant Point is known for, and is one of the primary reasons Lucey enjoyed her final tour of duty so thoroughly.

"It's the best place I've ever been," she said. "The station is an integral part of the community, so it's kind of cool to be a part of the crew that serves the island where so much of the life revolves around the water and makes our job pretty important and we're a major part of the community. They [Nantucketers] work on the water, play on the water and everything that gets here either flies over the water or comes across the water by boat. We've got to be at the top of our game, and I really like that challenge."

With her experience and years of on-the-jobtraining, Lucey will cross the harbor on June 4 to work at Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto's side, doing all the on-the-water jobs that the town politics aspect of the job keeps him from doing as much as he would like to.

"It's just at a different level with the same focus," said Lucey. "That was my main goal. I knew no matter how many years I spent in the Coast Guard I always wanted my next job to still be on the water and still be running boats. So, I was beyond excited that this opportunity was going to be on Nantucket."

RENT AND UTILITIES

There will be some lifestyle changes, however. When Lucey and her Chesapeake Labrador retriever, Shackle, move out of Gouin Village, her $53,433 annual salary from the town will allow her to move into a garage apartment owned by Town Projects Administrator Diane O'Neil of the Selectmen's Office, start paying rent for the first time in her life and saving for her own house on Nantucket.

The elation of new horizons and the sadness of leaving the Coast Guard will be softened somewhat this Friday by the return of around 90 percent of her original Station Brant Point crew, including Elijah Reynolds and Jovan Selvon, the 400-plus Coasties, friends and family coming to Nantucket for the ceremony and party afterwards, and three of her current crew who are leaving the Coast Guard the same day.

"It's a lot of mixed emotions," she said. "I'm really excited and it's kind of sad…it's just everything all wrapped into one."

After the tent is packed up and incoming Senior Chief Terrill J. Malvesti, a former fisheries law enforcement instructor from Otis National Guard Station is installed at Station Brant Point, Lucey will still be on the water. Just not at night in the winter when it is blowing 60 mph with 10 to 12-foot seas.

"I'll be able to work buoys again," she said with a spark in her voice. "I'll be able to just get out on the water. What I loved most about this job will be my main job over there," she said, motioning

towards town. I